"Keeping people away from the land—from their land—like this, it's evil. It's a kind of murder." The distinction between a murder mystery and a psychological thriller is a matter of some debate —certainly there are many psychological thrillers featuring a murder, and many tense mystery novels rooted in the psyche. But I'd like to propose a metric that I'll call the Copacabana Rule, after the melodramatic climax of the Barry Manilow song : "There was blood and a single gun shot— But just who shot who?" That is to say that if, rather than elements like motive, means, or murder weapons, the central mystery is suspense over which character is going to get axed (or indeed, if there was any murder at all), then you are firmly in psychological thriller territory. The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley passes the Copacabana test. There are four-ish corpses, and in my eBook, which displayed as having 492 pages, the first victim is identified on page 368, 75%...

"No point living if you've nowt to die for." The first book in D.L. Marshall's John Tyler series, Anthrax Island , was a surprise COVID-era gem. It got several rave reviews from the mystery blogosphere, and personally I found both the setting and the clever locked room mystery to be highly original. The version I read had this rather dour cover , so I was pleasantly surprised on picking up Marshall's second book Black Run to see these new editions pictured to the left. They really nail the tone of the series, that tone being "cheese popcorn". If you're not familiar with unconventional detective John Tyler, let me paint a picture: he's a grizzled super-spy from Yorkshire whose body is decorated with scars and "tattoos from everywhere he's done jobs". Some days he's stabbing a man in the throat with a screwdriver, and other days he's sat in a cafe with a Maigret novel drinking hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. He d...

You may have heard of the Detection Club , the mystery writers club formed in 1930, whose original membership included authors such as Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, and G.K. Chesterton. But did you know that the club also collaborated on several books? —Actually, anyone who had heard of the Detection Club would probably know this. Well, I've now read three of them. Here's what I thought! The Floating Admiral A round-robin novel in which each chapter is written by a different author, leaving G.K. Chesterton to tie it all up at the end. The roster features the most heavy-hitters, for sure, but it's more "writing exercise" than "readable". Reading it feels like a fever dream. The Floating Admiral recognizably has the structure of a mystery novel, but the story bobs from anchoring point to anchoring point. Plot threads are piled on, discarded, forgotten about. It's an interesting historical experiment for genre enthusiasts, but not something I ...

I've been a fan of Columbo since childhood, so hearing that there was a series that was "like if Columbo was an ambush predator instead of a persistence hunter" instantly caught my attention. That series is Inspector Furuhata Ninzaburō , a Japanese crime drama from the 90s. The format is similar to Columbo—a "howcatchem" with special guest stars—but with a "Challenge to the Reader"-esque break before the climax where you're encouraged to try and figure out what trick Furuhata will use to corner the culprit. Furuhata also addresses the audience at the start of each episode with spectacularly unhelpful "advice" that hints at the key point of the mystery. "If you wear a blue shirt, black pants, and a purple jacket, please don't wear a red scarf," he informs us, "because you will lose some friends." Furuhata himself, played by Masakazu Tamura, is memorably and charismatically awful. While Columbo can irritate peo...

  Recently my wife and I were discussing the best and worst video games we played in 2024, and she was surprised that I ranked immersive murder mystery sim The Painscreek Killings so low. I was surprised that she was surprised, since I remembered excoriating it, while she remembered me giving a glowing opinion. It turns out I had done both, at different times, so here is my second-chance attempt at synthesizing my evidently mixed opinion into a holistic review. The Painscreek Killings is a first-person mystery game that "mimics real world investigation". You play as journalist Janet Kelly, who has come to Painscreek to investigate the cold case murder of philanthropist businesswoman Vivian Roberts and the subsequent abandonment of the town. Armed with only a camera and whatever real-life notes you choose to take, your goal is to solve Vivian's murder and get a front page snapshot for your story. Of course, the game is called The Painscreek Killing s , and as you in...

"They were trying it with a bogy, but for a bogy to be effective its terrors must be known to the victim." This is the actual Rex Stout book chosen for John Dickson Carr's 10 Best Detective Novels , and I realized on cracking open the first chapter that I had read it in high school, despite remembering nothing about it. JDC chose Stout for his "literary" skill and character work: In the powerful story called The League of Frightened Men, with its tortured figure of Paul Chapin, you will find Wolfe the psychologist drawing a moral which might well be heeded by many writers of the too-hard-boiled school. A group of Harvard boys seriously injure an underclassman in a hazing prank, leaving him with a permanent leg disability. They guiltily form a "League of Atonement" to take care of him. What they don't realize is that their victim is Moriarty. Twenty-five years later, he is apparently taking his revenge by killing off the League one by on...

"If this is all true—you knew it last night, didn't you? Why the hell didn't you spill it when the sheriff was there? When the cops were there on the spot?" "I represented no interest last night, sir." Part of my motivation for reading Some Buried Caesar was that I came away from John Dickson Carr's essay 'The Grandest Game in the World' thinking that it was his one of his favourite mystery novels . When I looked up the essay again recently, I realized that the full list was written out elsewhere in the book it was collected in (if I had just turned back a couple chapters) and this was not one of them. Egg on my face, and the post has been amended accordingly. Well, I can still point to the other motivation, David Bordwell's lengthy and fascinating essay on Rex Stout's novels, which points out that in this one, Wolfe forces the killer to commit suicide. What on earth leads up to that? Some Buried Caesar is an atypical entry i...